The former creative director of “Borderland 3” explains that AAA masterpieces have lost creativity: developers are becoming more conservative for fear of ruining their brands.

Former “Borderlands 3” and “The Elder Scrolls Online” creative director Paul Sage (Paul Sage) said in a recent interview with GamesRadar+ that he believes that today’s studios developing AAA masterpieces are too conservative when creating and only follow the success stories of previous games. When making games, the reason for this is that they are worried that it will damage the reputation and market value of the series IP.

Paul Sage has worked for Bethesda, Gearbox Software, NCSOFT and served as the creative director of many famous games. After leaving Gearbox in 2021, he joined Ruckus Games as CEO and game director, leading the team to develop undisclosed new games. The studio Founded by developers who were tired of the game industry’s “huge costs and repetitive game mechanics.”

When talking about Ruckus Games’ mysterious new game being inspired by “Borderlands”, Paul Sage expressed some insights into the current landscape of AAA titles. He said that when the studio is too obsessed with people’s expectations for a certain IP, “We just unable to move in the direction the creatives wanted” and “reverting to previous game mechanics rather than introducing new ones.”

“This happens all the time in game series.” He went on to say that although he couldn’t mention specific mechanics, it was very frustrating. “Similarly, when you talk about how these game series work, there are some unnecessary People who are involved in the creative (creative) process are explaining how the creative process works.”

Sage cited years of experience at well-known studios as an example of how senior executives would sometimes interrupt a feature in development out of concern, present it to a focus group (some of whom were tested), and then kill those features that weren’t even ready. Showcasing exciting new features.

“Their original intentions are good. But at some point, when a feature is halfway developed, you don’t want others to look at it, because what they see will not be the full picture,” Sage said, comparing his mother to her when he was a child. He often paints. “If you look at a painting when it’s half-finished, it will look terrible. My mother would say, ‘Wait until the painting is ready before you look at it.'”

Sage pointed out that development teams want to evaluate games in development at the right time, but because there is a lot of money involved, some people will be nervous, “They will say, ‘Let’s take this to the group for testing now,’ and you I think it’s not ready for people to see yet, and at this stage they can only see the half-painted work.”